The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 43

ENTERTAINMENT WED- NOV. 3. V76 By MAX WYMAN Sun Drama Critic On a no-choice night like Tuesday, it does a body good to laugh. And so, at the North Vancouver Centennial Theatre, the-Swiss mime-clown Dimitri a one-man band of hope, joy and, in the face of every- thing, unquenchable human enthusiasm. The television election was abandoned or ignored by enough individuals to fill the theatre for Dimitri's return to B.C.

and they could hardly have found a more triumphantly entertaining two hours away from it all. This is clowning in an ageless tradition; we can take it apart bit by bit, analyse his timing and his acrobatic skills, his sense of; -balance and his extraordinary musical agility, we can argue the theory and philosophy of comedy and the clown, we can listen to learned discourse on the significance of wordless humor, the clever- ness of Chaplin and the merits of Marceau, and their synthesis in the form and work of Dimitri we can do all that, and you "are more than welcome to (I'll even read the thesis paper when you're through), but the only thing that was important on Tuesday night was that Dimitri made us laugh. His program was not much different for instance, wave his hand over a pyramided handkerchief, swish the handkerchief away to reveal nothing more than a pointing finger, and immediately become involved with the finger and the directions it indicates. Or he will be fooling around with a couple of plates on an edge of an upended trunk, lifting them, dropping them, and suddenly and you blink to be sure he has up-ended himself, standing on his hands on the plates, scratching an ankle with a casual foot He is classic clown, but he is more than pratfalls and banana peels, more than buckets of water and cream pies in the face, more even than a catalogue of his versatility would show. He is warm, likable, fallible, and, for all these human things, endearing.

Despite what must be a constant repetition, his act seems to make him happy, which makes it easy to enjoy it; he projects, too, a love for his audiences, and they, as loved audiences will, reflect it back. It makes a rich and simple evening. He was here for one night only, in North Vancouver, which is ridiculous. He should be somewhere downtown, for a week, and when he comes back you and the kids should abandon the television set, pick up granny, and go see him, Dimitri, all by himself, better than whole circuses. Rob Straight Photo I I jifftMi tt.jiL Redd thank goodness ifs VOu! wmm aim wwmb iwww WW Miles: grace By LLOYD DYKK Tuesday night's guest artists for Friends of Chamber Music at Queen Elizabeth Playhouse were the Melos Quartet of Stuttgart.

The Greek name that they have taken means melody, but there is something very harmonious about them as well. There exists among these musicians (violinists Wil-helm Melcher and Gerhard Voss, violist Hermann Voss and cellist Peter Buck) no dissonance of intent or process. They are superb musicians, individually and collec-, tively, and, though they are relatively young, they are in a direct line with the great quartets. if Sonically, they are so agreeable with one another; and apparently so sensitive to acoustical conditions of any milieu that, as a musician friend said, they were among the few groups who have managed to make the QEP sound good. This limpidity was demonstrated in a unusual program unusually well-played, consisting of Mozart, Brahms and Hindem-ith.

was refreshing to hear in the opening slot, not the usual classical token but, for a change, the most modern work on the program. Hindemith's third quartet, Op. written in 1921, is for me his most attractive quartet, the most balanced in lyrical By LES VYEDMAN Sun Movie Critic "This is not my luckiest apartment," complains a statuesque hooker who has struck out twice because the swish suite is occupied by a pair of homosexual lovers and nothing she can offer can make them switch. It is dry cleaner Ben Chambers, from Tucson, who has hired her because he thinks that making her available to his son will change him from a Tinkerbell to a heterosexual. When that fails, he brings her back for an encore with his son's male better-half, and that doesn't work either.

Since she gets paid $35 whether she performs or not, frugal father fights inflation by getting his money's worth himself. His naive and crude approach, to a sex problem that is finding a sudden popularity in both TV and movies should provide an idea of what to expect from Norman Is That a slick, momentarily entertaining and downright dumb comedy playing out at Lougheed Mall Cinema. It was directed by George Schlatter, the man who created Laugh-In, so it isn't without its hilarious moments, but they are principally due to the work of Redd Foxx as the father whose problems are worse than anyone else's. Son Norman has no problem until dad arrives unexpectedly at the Los Angeles apartment that he shares with a mincing mate called Garson. They are as happy as can be until Norman forces his obvious bed-partner to move out so that dad won't find out the truth, and his dunderheaded parent begins interfering.

Thank goodness that Redd Foxx is in the movie his first because without him as the stooge protagonist the material, tired, thin and trite, would have been unbearably unctuous. Foxx creates some of his own astringent wit a la TV's Fred Sandford, but mainly he plays the role straight, without the ribald qualities of his blue party recordings. Yet even Foxx gets tiresome manufacturing gratuitous laughs with the two gimmicks in the plot actually three, because direc- cliched arguments that only he has never heard before. If homosexuality was 'good enough for Socrates, Nero, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Chopin and Tschaikowsky, it is normal for anyone who thinks it is. In disbelief about The Dodgers and suspicious about The Rams, dumbfounded dad groans, "Movie stars maybe, but not Stephen Foster." Norman Is That You? has Tear! Bailey show up as Norman's adulterous mother, but too late to contribute much to the plot.

At first, she seems understanding when she says that interference is put, because "there is little enough happiness in the world." But there are inconsistencies in the characters. While Norman finds his own way out of the crisis but not out of his way of life mom and dad are heading back to Tucson with Garson, whispering together that maybe they can match him up with a pair of gay twins back home and maybe Norman can meet a doctor or a lawyer. The comic soap opera ultimately goes beyond its limits, and, despite the laughs, becomes questionable. Dennis Dugan as Norman's limp-wristed lover, and former basketball star Michael Warren in the title role are well-publicized as "straight," and they fail to convince that they are being sincere when acting together on screen. The word "love" is nowhere in the script, and the only contact between them is a careful arm-around-the-shoulder hug, so Laugh-in George, while pretending to break new ground, is really in a rut He doesn't want to offend anyone, but he does.

He has, however, made a movie that is making money, which goes to show where people's tastes are. But he can be credited with one achievement in this era of sky-high film production costs. He shot Norman Is That You? in 18 days, because that was all the time that Foxx and Bailey could give to the project; and he shot it on videotape rather than on film, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars while maintaining a quality that no one in the audience can complain about. from the program he presented at Simon Fraser University a year ago; it is not likely to change much between now and next November, when SFU's Centre for Communications and the Arts, which has sponsored both his appearances here, will bring him back. And why should it? It works as any of the hundreds of kids who were rolling around the North Vancouver theatre on Tuesday with their jaws aching and their eyes wet will tell you.

1 Dimitri is a bit of a lot of things. He wears simple ballet slippers, surprised-iooking pants that stop short just below the knee, and sloppy jackets such as are not generally worn by those who do standing backflips and land on their feet. He wears the classic white-face of the mime. His solo act, which he does with a minimum of props, most of them musical, is not at all circus-like; theatre pros, indeed, would probably call it a pretty sophisticated routine. He has everything laid out and threaded together; everything is done for a laugh, but it all falls into its own neat: place in the package.

This meticulousness is obviously an element of the remarkable freshness of his work it is filled with strange visual elisions and asides. He will fake a magic act, in performing and cerebral content and a glorious denial of Hindemith's common reputation as a dry composer. Aptly, the Melos players emphasized the quartet's richness of string sonority, which recalls the fact that Hindemith himself was a gifted string musician, and brought off with both precision and insight the special excitements of each highly contrasted movement, from the gravely chordal opening to the irrepressible concluding rondo. Perhaps their chief accomplishment in grace was the performance of Mozart's Quartet in K. 387, the first of the six dedicated to Haydn.

Such clean playing and articulated phrasing as theirs are rarely heard and still more rarely heard in conjunction with such an elegant and warmly human conception of how this piece should The 'concluding Brahms' quartet (C Minor, Op. 51, No. 1) was a trifle less spotless, and not surprisingly so, since this almost unyielding product of Brahms' austere North German nature deals in thick, difficult writing. However, this is a cavil against an insightful, communicative performance that, for the most, resolved the problem of creating transparency with a sometimes almost impregnably dense idiom, and captured the Brahmsian feeling of expansiveness and spontaneity of feeling. Rob Straight pholo The performance showed her to be an artist of moderate appeal, still suited to a small country-folk following.

Along with Trucker's Lament and Bluebird Cafe, she sang five pieces from Cool Wind. They displayed to an extent her versatility, but she declined to sing two interesting tracks, the title song and Poor Fool. Both are amazingly like something that Roxy Music's Bryan Ferry might da, al-though the lyricism is not as advanced. Nevertheless she sings with similar halting, tremulous phrasing. The tremolo did not work well with Good Old Song, which she did perform, and she eased up on it in other numbers.

Poor Old Rose was a poignant old lady's remembrances, a standard folk number, while Tumble-Down Woman followed a loose calypso line. Honey Hair was pleasant enough and River Road was forgettable. Tyson was accompanied by Danny La-nois on guitar, Kim Brand on bass, Kevin O'Donnell on drums, and Nancy Ward-Bartlett on piano. She was preceded by local artist Tim Williams. Sylvia has become a mild and harmless Canadian' institution.

I is WARREN AND FOXX tor Schlatter has made Norman and his family black, whereas in the original flop Broadway play everyone was white. This brings on revised attitudes and dialogue, all of them chestnuts that nobody can pull out of the ashes of Norman Is That You? For example, Foxx, in the picture, is an Archie Bunker fan, so instant -1 Illllllll I MIIIIIMIMMt Mli'mWi mil mujl -WSVXmtK MacSveen's the centre man Jack WASSERMAN unlikely father, unlikely son bigotry is established. "I'll kill him," he vows through clenched teeth when he solves the real meaning of the purple drapes, waterbed, a closet full of embroidered caftans and two plaster Davids. After he calms down and attempts his solution to the shocking situation blaming it on too early toilet training, or whatever he is dismayed again when confronted with' the chairman of the centre's board of directors. MacSween is a graduate of McGill University law school and practised law in Montreal from 1962 to 1973 before joining the theatre school.

His interest in theatre goes back to his university days, when he co-wrote and performed in a McGill satirical review called My Fur Lady. He appeared in all but one of its 402 performances when the show went on national tour. cided that all mayoralty candidates should, be invited to a meeting under Alliances auspices. The candidates agreed to turn up at City Stage at 4 p.m. on Thursday.

When offered 10 minutes to speak, Sweeeney responded that he could tell all he knew about culture in 30 seconds. Camilla Ross, who tried unsuccessfully to get some mileage for Dirty Linen, at the King Lui, by inviting politicians, hmmphed, "Even if they won't attend other peoples' performances, they'll attend their own." CONSUMER HUMOR When butter is $1.20 a pound and gasoline is inching toward a buck a gallon, it hardly seems worth quibbling over a few dollars here or there. But when my wife reported that she'd gone into a Big tire store and paid $16.21 to have her snow tires put on, I wondered if she hadn't been put on, too. She mentioned that it seemed a little high, be-. cause she'd paid $6 or $7 last year at the neighborhood service station.

So I dropped in to Woodward's on Cordova. The price was $6. What about balancing? The man in charge said he didn't recommend balancing of snow tires. Not even radials? Not even radials. So I phoned around several other stations in all parts of the city.

Everyone quoted $6. One was $7. 1 asked about valve stems. Most said they'd throw them in if necessary. So I phoned the Big on East Hastings and asked about the discrepancy.

Frank, the manager, explained that the charge was $2.50 for each snow tire. And $4 a wheel for "high-speed balancing." Plus $1.50 each for the valve stems. He rattled off the charges at the same speed as the "two all-beef pattie" commercials for McDonald's. So then I phoned Ed Lee, a neighbor who has the Big 0 franchise on the North Shore. He explained that it was absolutely necessary for radials to TYSON IN PERFORMANCE a Canadian institution Sylvia: mild and harmless OTTAWA (CP) Donald MacSween, 41, director general of the Rational Theatre School of Canada in Morttreal for the last three years, has been chosen to succeed Hamilton Southam on April 1 as director general of the National Arts Centre.

Southam will have served 10 years with the centre as its first director general. MacSween's appointment was announced at a news conference by Francois Merrier, dinner meeting of the council in the Mucka-muck, which is downstairs from the Ace. And which doesn't serve canned Campbell's tomato soup Carole Taylor must do something right. She's been spared Zsa Zsa Gabor, who cancelled out as a "co-host" "when Celebrity Revue taping sessions return to the Cave next week. Jimmy Dean will turn up, which might thrill some people Doug Mowat isn't exactly "run-, ning" for alderman, you might say.

The very able executive secretary of the B.C. division of the Canadian Paraplegic Associ-' ation also has a well-developed sense of humor. At a recent political function, a willing straight man asked, "What's your platform, Doug." To which Doug replied on cue, "A four-by-eight sheet of plywood, so I can get up a curb." TALK AROUND THE BLOCK Just for the record, it's a girl named Alexandra for John and Ljuba Pavlovich, the couple who "contravened their terms of tenancy" in a Block Brothers-managed apartment when Mrs. Pavlovich became pregnant. Among those joining in the congratulations were the Block executives who invited John to their office to apologize for their badly-written letter that could have been con-, strued as an eviction notice.

They'll be staying in their apartment for the time being. Vancouver Professional Theatre Alliance, which comprises nine of the city's stage companies, held a meeting where the subject of Ed Sweeney's nonsense platform on "cultchoor" came up. Somebody de undergo "dynamic He said his machine cost $7,000. And that $1.50 was fair price for valve stems. mentioned what the gas stations charged.

He told me not to compare a specialized tire store with a gas station. "That would be like comparing you to the North Shore's Peter Speck," he said, rather generously. He suggested that I make comparisons among other tire stores. Among those he mentioned was Crown Tire. One of the few pleasant experiences I had while operating a Bavaria was with Crown Tire, which is a warranty agent for Michelin.

As a mild curiosity, I discovered that if my wife had gone into Crown, and they'd sold her exactly the same service, it would have cost $2 less. Crown charges only $3 a wheel for balancing. "But what about the balancing?" I asked Vera, the manager. I'd had him put on my snow tires a couple of times, and I'd never noticed them bal-. ancing the wheels, although I'd been standing right there.

Vera said they didn't suggest it unless the customer was doing a lot of freeway driving. For city driving and here he revealed a tiny bit of chauvinism and especially for women who would most likely do their winter driving in the city, he didn't think it was necessary. So it would have cost her a lot less. Not that she was ripped off at the other place. She was asked if she wanted the wheels balanced and she said yes.

Her past experience in gas stations was that it was part of the service. As for the valve stems that had to be replaced well, the tires had 16,000 miles on them and they don't make things the way they used to. But $16.21 to put on snows WASSERMANIA And to think, only two years ago a guy came along and said he was Mr. Peanut and all he wanted was to be mayor. Well, why shouldn't they have a messed-up majority government, just like we ally do? THE TOWN AROUND US The bigots climbed back under their rocks, and not only as far as the CBC's French TV outlet is concerned.

There wasn't even an angry peep when CKVU started broadcasting in French the other evening. Mind you, 400 callers phoned to note that Mannix was suddenly speaking French. The segment lasted eight minutes while station ployees figured out what was happening. Seems that most of the film that VU brings in from Toronto goes on the air unscreened. Columbia pictures sent along a can of Mannix that should have gone to Quebec Commodore Drew Burns has issued a statement mat "for the first time in Vancouver nightlife history a club will feature a name orchestra on New Year's Eve.

The Tommy Dorsey orchestra will be at the Commodore." Now, if it was Halloween, Dorsey might be there, too. HERE'S WHO Artist-cum-folk hero Andy Warhol will whirl through Vancouver, on Nov. 20 on a double-barrelled mission, showing a group of his paintings from The American Indian Collection (most of which on exhibition in Paris) at the Ace Gallery; and acting as a recruiting aid for a hitherto secret group calling itself the Con- temporary Art Council of Vancouver, which plans to sell memberships at $100 a head. Warhol will be speaking at a private By NICK COLLIER Tuesday was a rough night for Canadian culture, but Sylvia Tyson remained undaunted as she opened her fiv-night stand at the Old Roller Rink. There were no more than 50 people present.

The U.S. presidential b'attle probably kept a number of potential listeners at1 home, but it is hard to say just how many. The club's attempts at repatriating Canadian music are usually met with a lack of attendance, as if natonal artists were anathema. Tyson had long been in the shadow of her husband Ian, with whom she formed a duo for many years. They enjoyed reasonable success in the folk market and broke ground for many artists who became international stars.

i For the past three years, Sylvia has hosted Touch The Earth, a grassroots CBC radio show. She now rarely performs with Ian, and has just released Cool Wind From The North, her second solo nlbum. Both albums, however, were produced by; Ian. Her set featured compositions from both albums and a few traditional folkies, such as The Farmer's the Man Who Feeds Us All. Wsrcor ijii.